Group claims hack of LulzSec, as suspected member is formally charged

By Kevin McCaney

Jun 22, 2011

The hacker group Lulz Security, which has attacked several government websites and promised to attack others, may have been hacked itself by a rival group, during a day that saw ripples from the group’s recent activities appear on several fronts.

The website BGR reported that a hacker from another group, called “TeaMp0isoN,” claimed to have hacked the website of a LulzSec member and said he plans to expose personal information on LulzSec members.

The hacker, who said he is 17 years old, also demeaned LulzSec’s bona fides as hackers, writing, “you will _NEVER_ represent the real hacking scene,” and went on to say the group was not a part of the underground movement. The website where the message was posted, which belonged to a Dutch man said to be a LulzSec member, has since been taken down, BGR reported.

Meanwhile, British police formally charged a 19-year-old man suspected of being a LulzSec member on counts related to attacks on the CIA’s website and the website of the British Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA), two sites LulzSec has claimed to have attacked.

Ryan Cleary of Essex was charged with five offenses under the U.K.’s Computer Misuse Act, according to the Associated Press.

After Cleary’s arrest, LulzSec had denied he was a member of the group. But one of the charges against Cleary specifically referred to the attack on SOCA site, and police said he is suspected of being involved in the CIA attack. Police also said they were examining one of Cleary’s computers for information on Sony, another victim of a LulzSec hack, AP reported.

And in an incident that could be related, the FBI, which has been working with British Metropolitan Police’s Central eCrimes Unit in the LulzSec investigation, raided a data center in Reston, Va., on June 21, seizing several Web servers, an act that took several websites offline, the New York Times reported.

The FBI raided a hosting facility used by the Swiss company DigitalOne, in search of information on one company’s client, the Times reported, but as a result of the raid, several other websites, including that of New York publisher Curbed Network, were taken offline. At least two other sites, Instapaper, and Pinboard, stayed up, but their performance was affected by the raid, according to the Times.

A government official told the Times that the FBI was in the process of investigating LulzSec and other hacker groups.

LulzSec has gained notoriety in the past few months, initially as a sort of old-fashioned hacker group that committed cyber vandalism seemingly for fun and bragging rights while saying part of its mission was to expose weak security in the organizations it attacked.

In addition of attacks on the CIA and U.S. Senate sites, it has claimed hacks of commercial sites such as Sony and Nintendo. The group also has hacked Fox.com and PBS.org, the latter in protest of how hackers were portrayed in a “Frontline” special, PC Magazine reported.

On June 19, the group appeared to up the ante, announcing it was teaming with the hacker group Anonymous on “Operation Anti-Security,” calling on hackers to attack government websites and leak classified information.Although its has not claimed any successful attacks on U.S. government sites since then, LulzSec said on its Twitter feed that it would release an Operation AntiSec “payload” June 24.

Meanwhile, a Brazilian spinoff of LulzSec claimed in the early morning June 22 that it had taken down the websites of the the Brazilian government and that country’s President, Dilma Rousseff, according to PC Magazine. Both sites were still down more than 16 hours later.